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Ken
Masugi- Columnist
 Ken Masugi is the Director of the Claremont Institute's Center
for Local Government.
Its purpose is to apply the principles of the American Founding
to the theory and practice of local government, the cradle
of American self-government. Dr. Masugi has extensive experience
in government and academia. Following his initial appointment
at the Claremont Institute (1982-86), he was a special assistant
to then-Chairman Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission. After his years in Washington, he
held visiting university appointments including Olin Distinguished
Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Dr. Masugi
is co-author with Brian Janiskee of both The
California Republic: Institutions, Statesmanship, and Policies (Rowman & Littlefield,
2004) and Democracy
in California: Politics and Government in the Golden State (Rowman & Littlefield,
2002). He is co-editor of six books on political thought,
including The
Supreme Court and American Constitutionalism with
Branford P. Wilson, (Ashbrook Series, 1997); The
Ambiguous Legacy of the Enlightenment with William Rusher,
(University Press, 1995); The
American Founding with J. Jackson Barlow
and Leonard W. Levy, (Greenwood Press, 1988). He is the editor
of Interpreting
Tocqueville's Democracy in America, (Rowman & Littlefield,
1991). [go
to Masugi index]
 Ward
Churchill Whines: Fascist America
Intellectual conartistry...
[Ken Masugi] 4/28/05
‘‘No Quarter:
Academic Freedom & the Rise of American Fascism” was Colorado
University professor Ward
Churchill’s topic in addressing a Claremont Colleges audience
last night (Jason Newell, Daily Bulletin 4/26).
Tedious, whining, egocentric, cliché-ridden, paranoid, shallow.
For most purposes, he could just as well be a member of the Posse
Comitatus (for which he expressed sympathies). While complaining
that he had been forced to write hastily, Churchill was unapologetic
for his “little
Eichmanns” essay, connecting the World Trade Center with
the exploitation of the Third World, with 9/11 a “karma coming
due.” The “chickens coming home to roost” were perhaps (following
his ancestral Indian thought) the “ghosts” of dead Iraqi children
(Iraq and 9/11!) and swindled and massacred Indians who had
dwelled in Manhattan. (He denounced the “racial purity board” which
is investigating his claims to Indian ancestry.) If TV commentary
labeled the attacks as “senseless” and President Bush could
say “be free or I’ll kill you,” why was he being persecuted
for showing the logic behind the attacks? What about Pat
Robertson and Jerry Falwell on 9/11 being a moral reckoning
for a corrupt America?
Moreover,
the enemy—they are fascists, he assured the crowd of several
hundred—was out to kill him, figuratively, he tentatively added.
The President and Colorado Governor were out to use and get
him. Churchill sneered at Lynne Cheney (the Vice President’s
wife) a couple times. He didn't care for Matt
Labash's essay either. Looks like Mrs. Cheney’s organization, ACTA,
is getting to him, not to mention David
Horowitz. Give your money to ACTA (not to mention the Claremont
Institute), not your Churchill-abetting college.
What evidence
does he have that America is fascist? Radar-gun cops, military-style
uniforms on UPS truck drivers, the alleged assault on ethnic
studies and “queer studies” programs, McCarthyism, corporate
ownership of America, regimentation, self-entitlement, and
a new world order. Of course America supports oppressive Israel
against the Palestinians. He denounced smoking bans. The authorities
are looking for “places to put people.” Pretty inept fascism,
it seems.
When a questioner
noted that Bush had been elected, Churchill broke out in “Deutschland,
Deutschland Ueber Alles.” Claiming to be a rule of law conservative,
he believes that all should do unto others and that the Declaration
of Independence should be used to dissolve the current government.
He did not, however, directly endorse the use of violence,
though he didn’t repudiate it either. He said something about
not advocating “violence in the context of endemic violence.”
Perhaps the
most revealing whine of all is his declaration that if free
speech has consequences, then “speech is not free.” Thus, Churchill
embraced the universities and the federal judiciary as the
two last islands of freedom in the country. He even had a good
word to say about his interim university President, conservative
Hank Brown. (Churchill knows what side his bread is buttered
on.) Maintaining his independence, Churchill once gave a nominating
speech at a Libertarian Party convention, admires some John
Birchers, and argues he is not a leftist. His aim is to “get
people out of the middle,” making them cease being “good Germans.”
What can
one say about such a caricature? He is a clever conartist,
who is making a nice living denouncing the very basis by which
he makes that living. Whether he gets anyone killed for taking
seriously his blatherings cannot be dismissed; that he gains
students’ trust and fills their heads with unmitigated nonsense
is evident. See our Claremont
Colorado report on Churchill. The best commentary on his
type (though his appears to break new ground) can be found
in Frederick Crews’s Post-Modern
Pooh. Finally, one should take a close look at Churchill’s
friends: the universities and the federal judiciary. With friends
like Churchill, they shouldn’t lack for enemies. But the cause
of Churchill's presence in Claremont needs to be addressed.
The newsreport
noted the individual Colleges' attempt to distance themselves
from the event. Responsibility should not be ducked:
The visit
was sponsored by the Intercollegiate Department of Black Studies
and Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies, and
not directly by any of the seven distinct academic institutions
that comprise the Claremont Colleges.
The venue
where Churchill spoke, Bridges Auditorium, is a facility shared
by the colleges.
But violence
is certainly something he hasn't foresworn in books like Pacifism
as Pathology (1998), which argues that sit-ins and Smokeouts
just aren't cutting much ice. Leading by example is Ed Mead,
who wrote the book's introduction, and who spent 18 years in
prison as a member of the George Jackson Brigade, which bombed,
among other things, three different government buildings in
the 1970s. Churchill claims in the book that he once taught
a hands-on workshop entitled "Demystification of the Assault
Rifle" (a group of lesbian feminists showed up and denounced
it as "macho swaggering"). And he admits to me, "I have more
guns than the average liberal and less than Charlton Heston," and, "yes,
I've participated in armed struggle," since the "right to engage
in the use of armed force to counter the forcible usurpation
of rights . . . is rather prominently enshrined in both domestic
and international law."
On a later
occasion, I press him on this subject, citing a 1987 Denver
Post piece in which he bragged about teaching the Weathermen
(largely known for property destruction) how to make bombs
and fire weapons--"which end does the bullet go, what are the
ingredients, how do you time the damn thing." He freely admits
that he was involved with the Weathermen for six months, even
giving them firearms orientation, before three of them accidentally
blew themselves up (with a bomb that was intended for a Ft.
Dix military dance, where more than punchbowls would presumably
have been targeted).
But about
explosives training specifically, he now hedges. "I wasn't
really qualified to provide it. There were army field manuals
floating around and I was undoubtedly asked--and answered as
best I could," he wrote me in an email, "but that doesn't really
constitute training." He adds that the FBI, after investigating
him, concluded as much. Though that may be true, I ask him,
wouldn't answering questions about explosives be the same as "teaching"--he
needn't have organized a formal weekend workshop? On this,
he failed to respond.
Churchill,
it seems, likes to play at being dangerous, then gets miffed
when people take him at his word. tOR
copyright
2005 Claremont
Institute.
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